Alabama

Canadians buy Eastwood Festival Centre (with slideshow)

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A Canadian investment firm and a Canadian entrepreneur have purchased Eastwood Festival Centre and intend to invest "millions of dollars" in renovations of the shopping center, one of the investors announced Friday.

Skyline International Development Inc. and Mark Gold have acquired the shopping center, and will rename it "Crestwood Festival Center," Gold announced. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"This area is coming back, big time," Gold said Friday afternoon. "Joining the revitalization made sense. After researching the area, we feel like the future is in Crestwood."

The 500,000-square-foot center will be leased and managed by Birmingham's Southpace Properties, Gold and Southpace said. Current tenants include Home Depot, Burlington Coat Factory and The Edge 12 Movie Theater. The Crestwood Boulevard property previously was owned by Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty Corp.

Among the changes that will be apparent to customers will be the addition of a police sub-station. The new owners are providing the Birmingham Police Department with 3,000 square-feet of office space and furniture free of charge.

Several community policing functions will be housed in the space, including school resource officers, gang education programs, police athletic teams and Police Explorers programs, said Birmingham Police Capt. Henry Irby.

"I think it's good for the community, and it's good for law enforcement, because it gives us an opportunity to interact," Irby said. "It's good for all concerned."

The new owners also are providing the police with a Smart car and two bicycles for use in community policing, they announced.

Christen Lewis, director of marketing and research at Southpace, said the shopping center is about 65 percent occupied, though negotiations are under way to lease 50,000 square-feet of vacant space to an undisclosed tenant. If that deal is closed, the center will be more than 80 percent occupied, she said.

Work already has begun to make some basic improvements, including repainting the parking lot stripes, improving lighting and trimming foliage, she said.

The Edge 12 theater opened in the shopping center in 2010, about four years after the former Regal Cinemas Festival 12 closed in the same space. Developers and neighborhood activists had hoped the opening of the theater -- the next nearest one for Crestwood residents is on U.S. 280 -- would spur redevelopment in the neighborhood.

Bob Robicheaux, chairman of the University of Alabama at Birmingham's department of marketing, industrial distribution and economics, said the sale of the property may be an indication that the neighborhood is moving in the right direction.

"It could be a very good sign," he said. "Somebody is trying to do something with it. It's their intention to profit off of it, not to lose money."

Toronto-based Skyline International, identified by Gold and Southpace as an investor in the project, is a subsidiary of Mishorim Development Ltd., an Israeli company that owns office buildings, resorts, hotels and shopping centers.

The Eastwood acquisition is the second for a new joint venture between Gold and Mishorim, though Skyline has separately been acquiring U.S. properties, Gold said.

"In the last 3 months, the company bought more than $30 million in property in the U.S.," he said.

The shopping center was an appealing investment, Gold said, because its stores get significant repeat business, its movie theater is seeing quickly-increasing revenue and its national chain tenants are producing "really high numbers."

"We plan to bring the life and energy back to the Center by being very hands on in regards to management," Gold said.

Efforts to reach executives with Skyline International and Developers Diversified were not successful Friday afternoon.